Evaluations of Decision Support Systems in Urban Planning: Aksaray Inner Castle as a Case Study

Özet

Aksaray is one of the oldest settlements in Anatolia and offers a multi-layered cultural heritage due to its geostrategic location and long history of settlement. The Kaleiçi (Inner Castle) district, which forms the historical core of urban development, retains its importance with its castle and wall system, confirmed by archival documents, historical maps, and early photographs, even though its physical traces have largely disappeared today. Throughout history, this area has served administrative, commercial, religious, and educational functions and is the fundamental focal point representing the continuity of Aksaray's cultural identity. The necessity for contemporary conservation approaches to evaluate not only the physical fabric but also socio-cultural, economic, and morphological processes make Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) as an important tool. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is widely used in cultural heritage planning because it can systematically determine the relative importance relationships between criteria. In this study, the AHP method was applied to Aksaray Kaleiçi; the area was divided into six sub-regions based on current use decisions, registered building density, and morphological characteristics. Five basic criteria obtained from the literature were evaluated: Urban Authenticity, Historical-Documentary Value, Cultural-Artistic-Aesthetic Value, Economic Value, and Urban-Formative Sustainability. Pairwise comparisons made by a group of ten experts on Aksaray and Kaleiçi were analyzed using the AHP method, and Urban Authenticity Value was determined to have the highest weight. This result shows that preserving the unique identity is a primary priority in conservation and planning decisions for the Kaleiçi area. The findings of this study provide a methodological framework that can be applied to similar historic city centers.